50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: JFK's Last White House Affair

Coincidentally, less than 11 months after JFK's assassination--on October 13, 1964--the ex-wife of C.I.A. Covert Action Head Cord Meyer--Mary Piinchot-Meyer--"was shot twice, once in the head and once in the chest, with no apparent motive," according to The Encyclopedia of American Scandal by George Kohn. Pinchot-Meyer had divorced C.I.A. Covert Action Head Meyer in 1956 and she and Kennedy "were still involved at the time of the president's assassination," according to the same book.

Pinchot-Meyer was also the sister-in-law of Newsweek's Washington D.C. Bureau Chief in the 1960s--Benjamin Bradlee of the Washington Post--and she lived in "a studio behind the Bradlees' house in Georgetown after her divorce," according to The Encyclopedia of American Scandal. A Washington Post vice-president named James Truitt was also a close friend of the C.I.A. Covert Action Head's ex-wife.

According to The Encyclopedia of American Scandal, JFK and Pinchot-Meyer "first went to bed together in December, 1961, a year after he was elected president" and "by the spring of 1962, their affair had become a steady relationship." The same book also noted that "Whenever Jackie Kennedy was out of town, which was fairly often," Pinchot-Meyer "visited the White House" and "recorded their visits in her personal diary, writing that she had once brought six `joints' of marijuana with her, of which she and the president smoked three before he stopped..."

After JFK's White House mistress was murdered, her sister found her diary "which allegedly contained so many references to Jack Kennedy that there could be no doubt that the two had a passionate romance;" and her sister and Newsweek D.C. Bureau Chief Bradlee "gave the incriminating diary to a friend, James Angleton, who was then Chief of C.I.A. Counterintelligence," according to The Encyclopedia of American Scandal. The same book also noted that Chief of C.I.A. Counterintelligence Angleton "either disposed of it discreetly, or as [Washington Post Vice-President] James Truitt claimed, it was destroyed at C.I.A. headquarters." Angleton later told a Times reporter that "I'm not privy to who struck John," according to The New York Times issue of December 25, 1974.

According to Citizen Hughes by Michael Drosnin, after Howard Hughes' death in 1976:

"None of the politicians he had funded said a word. Not Richard Nixon, not Hubert Humphrey, not Larry O'Brien, not even Paul Laxalt.

"Only one powerfull man stepped forward to praise him, a man who almost never spoke publicly, a man himself so secretive that his name had never appeared in print until just a year earlier, when he was ousted amid scandal from the lofty position he had held for three decades--Chief of Counterintelligence at the CIA, James Jesus Angleton.

"It was entirely fitting that Angleton, the CIA's purest product, the spook's sppk, should alone deliver his epitaph:

"`Howard Hughes! Where his country's interests were concerned, no man knew his target better. We were fortunate to have him.

"`He was a great patriot.'"

The same book also noted that "Angleton's eulogy was reported in Time magazine, April 19, 1976,""but Angleton "refused an interview to explain his remarks."

Coincidentally, according to Coincidence or Conspiracy by the Committee To Investigate Assassinations:

"James J. Angleton, the CIA's mysterious...Chief of Counterintelligence handled matters related to the Kennedy assassination for over 10 years...Angleton was forced into retirement in late 1974 as a result of his involvement in the CIA's illegal `Operation Chaos,' a secret domestic spying program that ahd been greatly enlarged under the Nixon Administration...

"In June, 1976, new information became available regarding Angleton's key role in dealing with the Warren Commission investigation. The Senate Intelligence Committee reported that at a meeting in late December 1963, Angleton had requrested that he be allowed to take over CIA responsibility for dealing with the Warren Commission probe."